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People often focus on major career shaping milestones like earning a degree or relocating for a better job. It’s harder to see the psychologically uncomfortable career shaping opportunities yet well worth the effort.

When leaders and managers must decide who to place on new projects, in newly vacated job spots, and in managerial and leadership posts, they draw on their everyday observations of staff behavior. How you behave in difficult and uncomfortable situations creates an impression that shapes your career opportunities.


5 Psychologically Uncomfortable Career Shaping Opportunities

• When You’re the New Kid on the Block. Moving onto an existing team can be uncomfortable. How will your expertise be received before you’ve had time to build trust? If you are adept at asserting without pushing, leaders see you as an asset to critical collaborations and sudden teams.




• When Deadlines Loom and You Have Little Information. These situations can challenge your sense of self-confidence and competence. If you perform well without blaming other groups for the void, leaders see you as a resourceful asset worthy of trust for tough high profile assignments.




• When You’re On a Toxic Negative Team. Do you succumb to the negativity — even if just to fit in? Or are you the lonely voice of inspiration that holds strong and re-inspires others? If you inspire in the face of naysayers, leaders see you as the turnaround titan that keeps productivity flowing.




• When Emotions Are Running High. Many people hate conflict. Avoiding it impacts results. Fueling it can be disastrous. If your focus and insight triumphs over emotion, you pop to the top of the next leader list!




• During Rapid Start-ups. Start-ups present a huge revenue and public relations challenge to companies. The learning curve is an expense. Delay is risky. The stress of these start-ups crushes many people. If you are a fast fearless learner undaunted by a lack of structured training programs, leaders see you as pure profit and risk reduction.

What does it take to develop these traits and seize these opportunities?

1. Desire
2. Persistence
3. Continuous improvement

You can strengthen your ability to blend into new teams, handle ambiguity, stay inspired, improve focus, and embrace fast change. In fact, you can achieve most anything you desire.

Leaders will notice; confidence and commitment burns bright.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. Masters in Organizational Psychology. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

As The People-Skills Coach™, I have written before on steps from brutally blunt to helpfully honest. Yet for those who are inspired by logic to change behavior, it bears listing the smart logical reasons why bluntness bombs out.

5 Smart Logical Reasons Blunt Bombs Out

1. No Warm-Up. Picture your bluntness as very cold water. If we push someone into a cold swimming pool, they remember the shock. If we let them wade in, they adjust to the temperature and can function. Thus if we want people to function and use our message, we shouldn’t shock them with bluntness.




2. Punching Dulls the Brain. Punching bags are not known for their performance. They hang and swing. If we are being blunt to effect a change, those we verbally punch may swing away from us yet they are not likely to understand or change behavior.




3. Bluntness builds barriers. Communication is for connection. Bluntness can create a busy signal — a barrier — between communicator and listener. If someone isn’t listening, your message bombs out.




4. Bluntness undermines respect and credibility. The strength of the message is weakened by the rudeness of the approach. Who is going to respect and believe the message delivered by a blunt creton?




5. Bluntness breaks bonds. Unless we each live as hermits, we interact with people to survive and thrive. Many times the same people more than once. Bluntness may get our words out but bombs out by breaking the bonds with those around us. It may even create vengeful feelings and instigate a war (verbal or hidden).

Many people resort to bluntness, out of frustration, when diplomatic honesty hasn’t worked. Others simply lose patience with those of less intelligence.

Yet when we reach the end of the rope, why cut it with bluntness? Unless we need to use bluntness to save a life or prevent death, hold on to the rope!

Take a moment and tap intellect, logic, and smarts to find a way to communicate with honesty and respect.

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™


Related Post: Leadership & Teamwork: Honesty May Hurt But Blunt Burns Forever

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

Most everyone, new graduates and experienced workers,  want a  career RISE.  To succeed, connect into the true meaning of these four people-skills traits.

The deeper you understand, embrace, and develop these 4 people-skills traits, the more valuable you become to the business and the boss — decision makers, executives, and managers.

R – Reliability. We think of this mostly as deliver what you promise and/or what you are assigned. That’s expected not exceptional.

For a career rise, connect into personality styles of the leaders’ you work for and with.
Understand their hot buttons and stay a step ahead of their needs.
Know when/how to point out the risk of their view or impending decision.
Facilitate their actions to make the business successful and help them prevent the failures.

I – Integrity. Hold professional confidences, behave ethically, be accountable for your actions and energy, correct your mistakes without excuses, give more than is asked or expected. Integrity builds trust and trust delivers long term career success.

S – Self-confidence. Less neediness and more initiative from you make life easier for your boss.

What it is: Strength in tough times, comfort adapting to change, insight on how your talent and experience apply to new and different situations, collaboration without fear of losing your own individual success, managing your own ego.

What it isn’t: False bravado, know-it-all thinking, who’s better than whom attitude, disdain for diversity.

E – Excellence. Pursue excellence through constant learning, innovation, and honest self-evaluation. When you are always learning and accurately assessing needed improvements you give the company (and the boss) more ROI for its decision to hire you.

What is your ROI for developing these 4 people-skills traits? Career success.

The executive’s trust in you and reliance on your contributions is the catapult for your career rise and long term success. Imagine a boss saying “I’ve never met anyone I can rely on more” — and then get that designation!


What other traits and actions have given RISE to your career? Please share your voice in the comments section below. It can help many.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers people-skills workshops, keynotes, and consultations that take you and your teams from inspiration to action. Combining humor, practicality, and a passion for excellence, Kate re-inspires success in all those she touches. See this site for customers’ comments and book Kate now.

As a coach, I specialize in transitions to help professionals meet some specific goal.  The transitions are from one behavior to another to achieve something new, different, or more.  

Some recent examples: 

• A Help Desk manager who wanted to be more assertive after receiving performance feedback in that light.
• A manager who wanted and needed better presentation skills for many aspects of her job.   She found the coaching fun and productive. 
• A systems analyst who wanted to relocate from the east coast to New Mexico and live a very different life.  She did not know where to begin to have this new life.   She is there now!
• A big thinker type – great at generating ideas, brainstorming, and creativity – needed to communicate with more focus.  The big thinker now uses an email template we created to communicate for impact. 

Why tap a coach?  Transitions from one behavior to another require more than just learning a new skill.    For most, it means overcoming blocks that stop learning and change.   There are many books out there about changing your career, your life, your outlook.  Ever read one and still no change?  As a coach, I inspire you to action!

ASK Kate!  This blog gives you the opportunity to pose your transition questions to me directly and get transition steps at no cost — until the end of March 2009.   I have extended this offer through the end of April 2009 to include followups to the International Help Desk Conference.   Many don’t want to post their questions here preferring instead to email me.   Either way is fine.

Let’s get started … Kate Nasser